


Colors or Lack Thereof

by KyeAbove



Series: Love and Other Mistakes [1]
Category: Bendy and the Ink Machine
Genre: Angst, Body Horror, Disoriented Timeline, F/M, Gen, Joey Drew Does Bad Things, Joey Is Bendy, M/M, Memory Loss, Mutilation, No Dialogue, No Living Toons, No One Tell Sammy Joey is Bendy, No Proper Names Used, Not Canon Compliant, Not Even His Own, POV Third Person Limited, Repressed Memories, Sammy & Johnny & Henry are brothers, Sammy Can't Remember Names, Sammy Lawrence Has ADHD, Susie and Allison are Alice Angel, That Is A Given, The Toons Are Dead People, Unreliable Narrator, Vivisection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-13
Updated: 2017-12-13
Packaged: 2019-02-12 12:11:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12958917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KyeAbove/pseuds/KyeAbove
Summary: The Prophet was loyal, but despite what his Lord may wish, it was to everything and to everyone he cared about. Not that there's much to care about in this hell.





	Colors or Lack Thereof

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote this a couple weeks ago, as a simple Samsie one-shot, but in the process of editing it to post, it became this instead. As the writing process usually goes for me.
> 
> I like to think this at least begins in the early days of everyone being ink creatures, and that includes things such as a stronger recollection of what happened before, and a little less insanity from all but the man once known as Joey Drew.
> 
> .......  
> Key:
> 
> Sammy = The Prophet  
> Joey = The Creator (as a human) and the Lord (As Bendy)  
> Johnny = The Pianist  
> Susie and Allison/Alice Angel = The Angel  
> Norman = The Projectionist  
> Henry = The Animator and The Betrayer  
> Wally/Boris = The Wolf

There was once color in the Prophet's life. More then the rotting yellow walls, the black of ink, the white of light, and the silver of metal.

The Prophet couldn't recall what these other colors were like. For him to hold onto the knowledge of their existence, when his memory was admittedly shallow as it was, he imagined they must have been wonderful. The Prophet wished to see them again one day, when he was free from his prison. 

When everyone was free.

The Prophet may no have been able to remember everything from before the ink became him, but he knew that the creatures and sounds were as trapped as he was. 

There were hands that grabbed for him when he walked through the halls, until _they_ realized he was just like them, and as they melted back into the ink, screaming, the Prophet had faint impressions of those hands working day to day to draw false images of his Lord, or gracing the instruments that still scattered the area the Prophet had made his home. Even now they were still searching for their pencils and their instruments, in a mindless imprint of time. The Prophet took to calling them Searchers, in honour of their endless and fruitless quest. 

Then there were the disembodied screams and moans that the Prophet heard whenever he attempted to play music on the organ. They were hauntingly familiar. He may have heard them echoing in the halls, long before they attached to the once comforting sounds of the organ. They were the screams of a man who's quirky voice and talent with a piano used to amuse children and adults alike, no more then how it had amused his brothers. Now they only brought misery. The Prophet struggled everyday to keep memories, but this memory was one he wished to forget. No matter what though, he could never forget that this damned voice was the last remnant the Creator left of the Prophet's younger brother. The Prophet avoided the organ.

Lower down then the voice that no longer spoke for a man, other creatures lurked. They were more then the Searchers, and much more then the Prophet. They more often then not easily resembled their perfect image, while the Prophet barely resembled his own. They were still very much deformed and in agony, and the Prophet was thankful that while the ink had stretched his body far from its once short stature, at least he wasn't in pain, mouth sewn shut, leg missing, or head detached from his body. 

They screamed at him, words malformed as they were, but they knew the lies of the Creator. The Prophet showed them mercy whenever he crossed any of their paths, freeing blows from his axe silencing them, but they always came back, same painful bodies and the same words they must have spoken in life. 

Sometimes when they swarmed him, there would be brief hesitance. Some moment of lucidity where they knew who they were. The Prophet was greatful that although his memory was fading, he knew still who he was. In these moments, the Prophet hesitated killing them, but went through every time. 

Once, in a moment of pure exhaustion, the Prophet had sat down on a stairwell, and stayed there for some time playing his banjo. Lucid or not, the Prophet couldn't say, the three had all ended up following the music, and all three curled up into him, listening to him play, and in this peace and truce, the Prophet spread the word of his Lord to them. His Lord would save them, one day, from the Creator's mistakes and free them from their inky bodies, giving them their rightful deaths. They had seemed excited by even the possibility, and didn't protest when the Prophet butchered them, that temporary relief before the ink spit them out again. Fitting for the images they had been forced to take in lieu of his....friends? The Prophet knew he was unwelcome in these halls long before hell was set upon it.

Much further down into this hell, where the ink was so flooded that even Searchers were drowned out before they could form, those false images of the Searchers' past played without sound or music, and only the shifting ink played along to the slides. The Prophet couldn't help but watch them, repeating. Even silent now, it had never been the Prophet's music attached to it. One of the early cartoons, that the Prophet didn't have a hand in, but heard all about from the Animator. He could imagine the tune it would have received had he accepted the job offer that the Animator kept pushing much earlier, and played the tune on his banjo.

There was a scream. Not like the Searchers, or the trio of deformed souls, or even the moans of the organ. Inhuman, muffled, desperate. The Projectionist shinned his light on the Prophet, and the Prophet backed away in fear, calling for his Lord who would not come, until the Projectionist charged at him and brought him into a hug. The Prophet now heard desperate cries for help breaking in and out from the speaker on the creature's chest. The voice of a man who knew too much, so the Creator disposed of him in the worst way possible. The Prophet had forgotten this poor creature walked this area, but could show him no mercy with his axe. 

The Prophet could only let the Projectionist cling to him for the many ages they stayed together, until the Projectionist's mind was taped over with those false moving pictures of the Prophet's Lord, and the Prophet himself was going restless and desperate, watching his only remaining friend slip into unintelligible screams. There was nothing he could do for his friend, so the Prophet left the Projectionist to wander, in hopes that his Lord could one day save his friend as well. He didn't want to be alone again, but the Prophet told himself it was for the best.

The Prophet wandered for some time, pandering to his Lord, and spending his time slaughtering a new face that the ink spit out. The Wolf. An annoying creature, and the Prophet hated that the first time he emerged from the ink it was with a familiar accent and the same careless smile, and barely in image to perfection. Every time he died, his soul reformed the ink into a better Wolf. Even as he went mute, and his face and form became less human, the Prophet hated him.

He didn't seem to be the only one. 

The Prophet was finding bodies still melting into the ink that he had not put there. His Lord grumbled about this, and while He couldn't tell His Prophet what was behind this, the Prophet soon learned by himself.

He heard her voices first. They were much more pleasant then the cries and screams of friends and family not so long ago. She sang sweet words, but her tone was just sad and violent as the voices the Prophet was used to. It was all the more sweet even then. When he finally laid sight on her, the Angel, beauty to behold even as she fell apart in her very being....

She screamed. 

The Angel screamed at the sight of his Lord, the Prophet's mask, that until he saw the Angel he believed was the only face of perfection.

Her scream alone made the Prophet leave her presence. But he always came back to her, following her singing, and stayed hidden just so he could hear her voices untainted by her screams. One time he dared to play his banjo to the half forgotten tune she was singing. He would dare to say he wrote it. 

The Angel didn't stop singing. She may have even sung more enthusiastly. He stopped playing when she stopped singing, and a moment later she was there, in front of him. Her body was tense, but she leaned towards his face, removing his mask, and planting a chaste kiss on his face. 

In her sweeter voice, she thanked him for a good time, and in her more seductive, deeper voice she demanded that he leave and never go looking for her again. 

She left him then, but the Prophet swore he'd see her again.

It soon looked like he never would after all. Her voices went unheard in any level he checked, so either she had found a home far away from what he knew, or the Angel had stopped singing because of the Prophet. 

The Prophet had felt so much sadness before, but this was....

Heartbreak.

The Prophet didn't have a heart. It couldn't be heartbreak. But it felt so similar to it. 

The Prophet had faint impressions of his heart. Sometimes he swore he could feel it, especially as he desperately searched for the Angel. But it really was gone. Before he was reborn from the ink, before he died, he knew pain as his chest was ripped open, and his heart was cut out, blood dripping onto his face as it was held above him by the Creator.

The Creator preferred punishements like that. The removal of his heart no doubt had meaning. Maybe something to do with love. But it could have also been life. 

When the Animator left in a rage, with good reason, the Creator had made it known that this man should be known as the Betrayer. Many rumors circulated, but everyone had already known, approval or not, that this wasn't the break of business partners, but of lovers, and this break was all the Creator's fault. 

With the Betrayer gone, the Creator went off the deep end, taking it out on the Musician and Pianist, the Betrayer's older brothers, who the Betrayer had been so adamant about hiring due to their mutual musical talent that the Betrayer did not share. They should have left when the Betrayer did, but for their budding careers they chose to stay. A mistake.

They became reminders of the love the Creator had lost. The Pianist had the Betrayer's smile and shared similar laughter, while the Musician shared his eyes with the Betrayer. Their shared last name helped no matters, not that the Prophet recalled it nor his given. 

The Creator made it so the Pianist could never laugh again, damning him to simple misery, while he eventually took the Musician's eyes, long before the Creator blinded himself, and it was only recently that he had been given sight once more by the mask his Lord had graced him, earning the Musician's trust and cementing him as the Lord's Prophet.

While pleased with this, the Prophet only wished his Lord had been able to restore his missing fingers. Before his blinding, the Creator had caught the Musician as the one writing on the wall in the dreaded ink. The Prophet could recall in some detail his ink stained hand dripping with the ink as he painted **I Don't Want To Work Here Anymore** on the wall, and whenever he saw that message now, he always starred at the five-fingered hand print he'd left under it as he'd been dragged away by the Creator. To the Creator's sanctuary, where he was parted from his fluidity of play that he'd been accustomed to all his life, and he thought losing his fourth fingers was just as miserable as everything else he would later lose. 

He still stubbornly continued to play music as he could, and until he lost his sight he continued to paint on the walls, and as a stubborn desire against the Creator, the Prophet resumed this practice once he had his sight back. 

The Prophet was sure the messages had always been for him, even though he claimed to his Lord that they were meant for all. But who was lucid enough to read them? Who even cared? It started out as a warning, and then a reminder, then a way to pass time. After a while the Prophet became unsure what some of them meant. **The Creator Lied To Us** was simple enough, but words such as **Dreams come true...** were lost on him. 

What dreams weren't lies? 

The Creator had taken away everyone's dreams. There was nothing to bring those dreams back. All because the Creator no longer had someone to hold him back. 

The Creator had long since disappeared, and with his leaving arose the Prophet's Lord. No doubt his Lord had disposed of the Creator. The Creator, who had stripped everyone of their identity and their names. The Prophet knew there was no way back to the yesterday that was no longer fully recalled, but his Lord had promised with His never leaving smile that He would release them all from their pain. His Lord had give him hope of one day seeing his brother as more then an imprint of yesterday, or at least knowing blackness that wasn't this ink. The Prophet just wanted a proper, permanent death to his name. 

So he did what his Lord asked, and some he did rather gleefully, such as returning the Wolf constantly to the Ink. 

When the Prophet slaughtered the Wolf one particular time, he had no idea how it would end up angering his Lord. The only difference he recalled later was how he'd written **Who's Laughing Now?** on the wall beside the most recent corpse. 

The Wolf had always laughed back when he was the Janitor, and when the Creator wasn't such a liar, and the Betrayer was still just the Animator, and the Prophet was still the Musician. The Janitor always lost his keys and his tools, and the only excuse the Musician ever accepted from him was that the Creator and the Animator were having a moment and the Janitor didn't want to interrupt them just to grab a wrench that might not even be in the room.

Otherwise, there was no excuse. When the Prophet retrieved a wrench from one of the pedestals in an almost familiar room, he stuck it in the Wolf's open chest. That way, the Wolf wouldn't forget his tools again. The Prophet was unable to locate the keyring, but that just counted as another strike against the Wolf. 

The Wolf didn't come back again. A shame, because he was already near perfection. The Prophet had been waiting until the Wolf was perfect, no trace of the Janitor left, and then he'd feel even more satisfaction killing that Wolf knowing he'd killed all last traces of the Janitor. 

Quickly growing bored, the Prophet began taking other things from the pedestals. The record played a melody that the Prophet knew word for word, and as he sang to it, he wished the Angel was there to sing along. He assumed she would have loved this song. 

When the music became too painful to sing alone, he moved to the other items. Very few of the items held his attention for long, and he tossed them aside quite soon after removing them, but a squeaking toy in the image of his Lord caught his fancy. The Prophet, with much guilt, kept the toy close to him at all times. His Lord hounded him all the time for it, but the Prophet knew it must be special, for it to be on a pedestal. Even though it was offensive to his Lord, and his Lord had grown moody since the Prophet had take it, the Prophet wanted to keep it as a replacement heart.

The Machine was strangely silent throughout all this, and the Prophet assumed this was the true cause of his Lord's grief, but didn't think too much of it.

It was during this blasphemous time that the Prophet heard his long lost Angel singing once again. It was faint, but the Prophet followed it to her. He needed to see her face once again, even if it was only a glance. 

When he did see it, it was even more perfect, in it's own way. The Prophet would see her as beautiful no matter what she looked like. He wanted her smile, but she yelled when she saw him, demanding he leave, but at the same time he recognized a hope that he would ignore her word. Before his nonexisting heart could break again, the Prophet removed his mask. 

Although he could no longer see, he heard the Angel speak, in her deeper voice mocking him for following the law of a liar, but commend him for betraying that all that moment he saw a pretty girl's face. In her sweeter voice, she asked if he'd play his banjo while she sang, his remaining fingers finding the strings even without sight, and they continued this way for some time.

The Prophet could tell from her voices that the Angel was smiling as she sang, and he recalled the image of a smile he once knew. One of a girl he had loved. It brought the same messy regret and heartbreak losing his Angel had brought. Maybe his nonexistent heart had been telling him something all along.

It was a startling thought, but he pushed it aside for the moment,continuing to play as the Angel sang with her two voices. Singing a song of life of black and white, but somehow more colorful then the lie they all lived now.


End file.
